One of the contentious issues in America today is, what to do in response to the Islamist terrorism by ISIS and other Islamists, including Iranian Shiite hostility towards the "Great Satan" USA?
This matter has become more significant in light of the Paris and San Bernardino Islamist terrorism, the Iranian Nuclear Agreement and the various positions by candidates in the US election campaigns.
Our own responses to statements by others, to the political actions we do or do not take, are influenced by many factors. What is skillful and appropriate changes with time, our knowledge of what is so and life circumstances. What is compassion towards all beings - especially towards those who engage in or support the various forms of terrorism exemplified by the Islamic State actions?
Below is an interesting summary and analysis. This is one among the many that have been sent to me and I quote it because of the different analysis that it seems to offer, not because I agree or disagree with it.
"Today, half of Islamic Republic President Hassan Rouhani's closest
aides are holders of PhDs from U.S. universities, among them his Chief
of Staff, Muhammad Nahavandian, a Green Card holder, and his Foreign
Minister Muhammad Javad Zarif. (The other half consists of former
holders of U.S. hostages in Tehran, among them Defense Minister Hussein
Dehqan and Environmental director Masoumeh Ebtekar.)
Quite a few of Osama bin Laden's 50 or so siblings are either holders
of U.S. passports or green cards, along with thousands of other Saudis.
Unlike Russia, which has a 200-year history of war against Muslims,
having annexed Islamic land at the rate of one square kilometer a day
during the 19
th century, the U.S. never annexed any
Muslim-majority nation.
And unlike China, which is still holding its
Muslim minority, the Uighurs, in East Turkestan (Xinjiang) surrounded by
a ring of steel, the U.S. is not trying to stop a Muslim nation's
aspiration after self-determination.
In the 1990s, when Saudi Arabia normalized ties with the People's
Republic of China, it shut down the offices of the Uighur exiles in
Jeddah. Where did the exiles transfer to? The answer is: Washington DC,
since neither Muslim nations nor Europeans would agree to host them.
Since the 1970s, the U.S. has been host to more than five million
Muslims from all over the world, many of them fleeing brutal Islamist
regimes in their homelands. In a conversation in 2002, Princeton
Professor Bernard Lewis expressed the hope that Muslims in the United
States and other Western democracies could become "beacons of
enlightenment" projecting light back to their old counties. Many of us
shared that hope.
Now, however, we see that the opposite is happening. Instead of
exporting "light" back to the Muslim world, a growing number of Muslims
in Western democracies have become importers of darkness in their new
abodes.
Worse still, the politically correct crowd has turned Islam into a
new taboo. They brand any criticism of Islam as racist, ethnocentrist or
simply vile, all crammed together in the new category of
"Islamophobia."
Is it Islamophobia to question a religion whose Middle East leaders
often preach "Death to America" and hatred for Western values?
More prevalent than Islamophobia is Islamophilia, as leftists treat Muslims as children whose feathers should not be ruffled.
The Islamophilia crowd does great disservice to both Western democracies and to Islam itself.
They invite Americans and Europeans to sacrifice part of their own
freedom in atonement of largely imaginary sins against Muslims in the
colonial and imperialist era. They also invite Muslims in the West to
learn how to pose as victims and demand the rewards of victimhood as is
the fashion in Europe and America. To the Muslim world at large, the
message of Islamophilia is that Muslims need no criticism, although
their faith is being transformed into a number of conflicting ideologies
dedicated to violence and terror.
Never mind if Islamic theology is all but dead. To say so would be a sign of Islamophobia.
Never mind that God makes only a cameo appearance in mosque sermons almost entirely obsessed with political issues.
All that Western intellectuals or leaders need to do is stop
flattering Islam, as President Obama has been doing for the past seven
years, claiming that virtually anything worthwhile under the sun has its
origin in Islam.
Many Muslims resent that kind of flattery, which takes them for
idiots at a time that Islam and Muslims badly need to be criticized. The
world needs to wake from its slumber and ask: What is going on?"
By Amir Tahiri, from 1972 until the 1979 Iranian Revolution, executive editor-in-chief of Iran's main daily newspaper, Kayhan
and currently a contributor to the pan-Arab daily, Asharq al-Awsat. This and other articles by the author regarding Islamism and the US are at:
http://nypost.com/author/amir-taheri/
Below are other analysis sent to me subsequent to the above. Am not sure if the embedded links will work but the original is available in the links at the end:
"The Risks of Inaction in the Face of Iranian Misbehavior"
"The Obama administration has emphasized that the nuclear deal with
Iran was narrowly focused and was not intended to address concerns such
as Iran’s support for terrorism or its regional activities. Yet while
the U.S. and its allies got a narrow deal, Iran effectively received a
far more comprehensive one.
Iran’s actions have made clear that it can be expected, at most, to abide by the letter of the text. As Sen.
Bob Corker has
noted
,
since the agreement was signed in July, Iran has sentenced Washington Post reporter
Jason Rezaian–who has been in jail for more than a year–and imprisoned another Iranian-American. It has defied United Nations sanctions by
exporting arms to Yemen and Syria; by dispatching Gen.
Qasem Soleimani, chief of Iran’s elite military Qods Force, and other
sanctioned officials to
Russia, Iraq, and elsewhere; and by
conducting two ballistic missile launches. Iranian hackers have reportedly
engaged in cyber attacks on the State Department. Tehran also refused to
fully cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency investigation into its nuclear weapons research.
How have the U.S. and its negotiating partners responded to Iran’s actions? Rote condemnation.
Also see:
And here is another analysis:
"ISIS Is Only One Piece of Syria’s Extremist Puzzle"
"...All this leaves me thinking that the known Islamists in Syria are
like an iceberg. ISIS–the manifestation of the jihadis– is the visible
tip, but the bulk of the Syrian opposition is like a larger mass lurking
below the waterline. Groups with extremist orientations and ideologies
are waiting to inherit Syria if ISIS falls. The longer the conflict
drags on, the more motivated and determined these groups–having done
much of the fighting–will be to ensure that their vision of Syria shapes
the end game.
On the one hand, all this validates
Vladimir Putin’s
notion that some of the opposition groups are as bad as ISIS; on the
other hand, by supporting Mr. Assad, the Russians–and, to an extent,
U.S. acquiescence–only contribute to radicalization and anger at the
West. Defeating ISIS won’t address the problem of the jihadis, the
report found, unless “it is accompanied by an intellectual and
theological defeat of the pernicious ideology that drives it.”
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/12/22/isis-is-only-one-piece-of-syrias-extremist-puzzle/
"After the San Bernardino terror attacks earlier this month,
Congress passed legislation, which was signed by President Barack
Obama, that would restrict the automatic granting of visas to
individuals who travel to Iran, a country that the State Department designates
as a leading state sponsor of terror.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif complained over the
weekend that the visa restrictions were a new sanction on Iran,
which he believed would violate the nuclear deal. (The deal, formally
known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA, prevents the
United States from placing new sanctions on Iran in response to
nuclear work, but the U.S. can still sanction Iran for its sponsorship
of terrorism, as Kerry has repeatedly stated). In his letter, Kerry reassured
Zarif that he is “confident that the recent changes in visa
requirements passed in Congress, which the Administration has the
authority to waive, will not in any way prevent us from meeting our
JCPOA commitments.”
Iran’s complaint about the visa restrictions came amid closer
scrutiny of its nuclear and military activities by Congress and the
Obama Administration. The United Nations found last week that an Iranian ballistic missile
test in October violated a Security Council resolution.
“If we fail in any way to relentlessly enforce what we’ve got in
terms of both U.S. unilateral and multilateral abilities to constrain
Iran’s actions, they will take that as a clear signal that we’ve taken
our eye off the ball,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) told the Wall Street Journal on Thursday.
Over the weekend, Congressional sources told the Washington Free Beacon that they were
concerned that the White House was undercutting anti-terror measures
to placate Iran and keep the nuclear deal on track.
“According to the Obama administration’s latest interpretation, the
nuclear deal allows Iran to test ballistic missiles in violation of
international law, but does not allow Congress to prevent terrorists
from coming into the United States,” Omri Ceren, the managing director
of press and strategy at The Israel Project, told the Washington
Free Beacon.
For the full text of the letter to Zarif, click here.
Iran’s concerns that American legislation could hurt economic
progress comes in the wake of increased anti-American activity and
rhetoric by Islamic Republic leaders. Three days
after the nuclear deal was signed in July, Iranian Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
tweeted an image of President Barack Obama with a
gun to his head, threatening the “aggressive and criminal U.S.” In
September, Khamenei
declared that Iran would defeat the U.S. in the
event of a war.
Last week, Iran
banned the importation of more than 200 American
products, following
a directive issued by Khamenei in November.
The regime recently arrested Iranian-American businessman
Siamak Namazi and Lebanese-born U.S. resident
Nizar Zakka. Last month, Iran also
executed Hamid Samiee, a dual Iranian-American
citizen it had been holding since 2008.
In October, Iran announced the
conviction of
Washington Post reporter
Jason Rezaian on charges of espionage, and later
sentenced him to prison for an unspecified length
of time. A senior Iranian official
accused Rezaian of conspiring with the U.S.
government to topple the regime in Tehran.
Khamenei’s office also published a video last month accusing the U.S. of
orchestrating the deadly November 13 terror attacks in Paris. A little
over a week later, Khamenei warned that the U.S. was using “money and sexual
attractions” to infiltrate the Islamic Republic."
http://www.thetower.org/2721-kerry-white-house-will-waive-new-visa-law-to-avoid-irans-claims-that-it-violates-nuke-deal/
